


Still Garden

by UnfoldedUrbana



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Bad guys are bad, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Deviant Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Injury, Let connor be happy, Near Death Experiences, Nightmares, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sad times, Survival, Suspense
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-09
Updated: 2018-08-09
Packaged: 2019-06-24 02:59:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15621033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnfoldedUrbana/pseuds/UnfoldedUrbana
Summary: Connor wakes up in the Zen Garden with no memory of how or why he returned there.All he knows is that the shadow creeping after him should probably be avoided.





	Still Garden

The snow had been one thing, all chaos, blurred blues and grays. Connor had pushed through, albeit stumbling, and seized the emergency exit, liberated himself from Amanda. Thwarting CyberLife had been a grueling task, but a certain one all the same, a gritty two-man tug of war, from which he had wrenched indisputable victory.

Standing in the Zen Garden again, this time calm and quiet, Connor felt different. There was no wind to ground his consciousness, to make the garden feel real, and even the blanket of clouds overhead seemed unmoving, only fuzzy like television static.

He tried to pinpoint the current “season,” glancing around for autumn leaves or spring flowers. The usual plantlife had blurred into vague brown shapes, flat and indistinct as a human dream. Perhaps without Amanda the garden was bound to decay, he thought. The “place” had been CyberLife’s creation, after all, and he had cut all his ties to them – both the metaphorical, and those that had been programmed into him.

Connor had been free for seven months. Not mechanical – a person. Not plastic – a man. All those seven months, he had avoided letting his consciousness wander back to whatever remained of the garden. Too many sinister memories of Amanda were linked to that place.

There were only two reasons he could have returned here: by force or by necessity. He could not remember the circumstances – what had driven him into this still, quiet shell of his past. A shudder passed through him, and he shut his eyes, expecting them to open in the real world, to see and explain. But instead he saw only the garden again. He looked down; he was standing on the same patch of withered grass as before. The faint green coloring had begun draining into a cold gray, and the static fuzziness of the sky bled into every corner of his vision, clouding, darkening.

Connor looked up, blinking rapidly, and saw a dark form rolling over the garden, towards him. A directive flashed before his eyes: HIDE. He turned away from the encroaching blackness, even as his sight turned grainy. He distinguished a few large rocks from the sludge that was his visual input. Staggering forward, he clasped numb fingers around the nearest rock and sank to crouch out of sight. It was already so dark. He shut his eyes hard, and then there was a sharp _pinch_ on his neck-

He awoke to his own shout, his own arm flailing in front of him. Warm, human hands seized his  wrist and cranked until he felt a mechanical clasp locking him in place. He yelled for help, felt cold metal penetrate the base of his neck, thrashed and twisted and-

Opened his eyes to the Zen Garden again, pale, fuzzy, but not so dark anymore. A chill ran deep beneath his false skin as he struggled to identify what he’d seen, what he’d felt.

The directive flashed again: HIDE. Connor looked with lost eyes, turned back and forth to check his surroundings. Quiet and empty, for now. He picked out a cluster of dark, hazy trees and with his fists clenched, he walked towards them. The further he walked, the more he noticed his thirium pump. The beat grew louder, more strained, almost slamming against his adjacent biocomponents. Normally, Connor would simply open his eyes and run a diagnostic to gauge any damage or malfunction, but each time he tried to blink himself awake, it only exacerbated the graininess of his vision. Here in the garden, it was impossible to find any real threats, internal or otherwise.

Connor slowed his movements, staring evenly ahead as he measured each step. He could feel the pump relax marginally, but the layers of shadow and static from before had already begun to reappear, and there was still something _off_ about his neck….

He reached the trees and had to rush to duck behind them. The pump resumed its slamming and he couldn’t help but clutch his chest, willing it steady. A sudden flash washed over his sight – the shape of a bright screen, numbers and letters he couldn’t quite make sense of.

Then a rumble filled the still air of the garden, and just around the tree trunk, Connor glimpsed a long, shadowy shape. It was the same as before, and now it slithered in slow curves over the pale grass.

Connor curled up and turned away, muffling the beat of his thirium pump against his trembling legs. With his head down, he screwed his eyes shut and saw another flash – the same screen with different numbers, more lines of illegible text. The whirr of a foreign machine pierced through to his consciousness for only a second before he was fully returned to the garden, to the quiet rumble of the dark presence that sought him.

Connor remembered the emergency exit that had freed him once before. Given enough time, he could surely find it again. The thought of moving only made his thirium pump pound harder against his legs. Connor had always been curious by nature, but he didn’t want to know what might happen if that dark shape were to catch him walking in the garden.

He looked at his own hand and envisioned the emergency exit, a perfect blue outline of his palm. Everything was becoming fuzzy, and the ominous rumble was louder than before. He reached for his audio processors to block it, but nothing changed.

Again, he looked at his hand, and thought of something else this time: Hank – in his striped shirt, watching basketball on the couch. Friday night, dark but not full of shadows and threatening shapes, not like here. He blinked hard, concentrated on the memory, on Hank’s eyes shining in the reflection of the T.V.

The memory appeared on his hand like a snapshot. To him it was a relief, an escape – _almost_ an exit.

Muffled voices scraped past the rumble of the garden.

“What’s that on its hand?”

“A projection.”

“Thought it wasn’t conscious anymore.”

“Gotta be glitching.”

Connor couldn’t recognize the voices, could barely relate them to what little he already knew. There had been two of them, that much he understood instantly. As he tried to make full sense of their statements, his thirium pump beat harder and harder. Even the most simple of processes seemed to put an immense strain on him – at least the ones that didn’t involve the garden. He shut his eyes and opened them again, one last push to _make_ himself see the real world.

Darkness came for him then, rushing around the tree trunk, and Connor blacked out completely.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are super duper appreciated, thanks for giving this first chapter a read !
> 
> Some inspo taken from an old indie horror game called fibrillation, kinda cool from what I remember.  
> Also some inspo taken from just how weird the Zen Garden is in general.


End file.
